2015 Pipeline Awards Recipients!

Rachel Knight
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Jan 1, 1970

Yesterday at our SIGGRAPH User Group we had the honor of recognizing excellence in pipeline tool development and people who have made significant contributions to the pipeline community – with the 2nd Annual Pipeline Awards!

We had a spectacular field to choose from, with fully twice as many submissions as last year covering everything from game engines to artist tools to cloud rendering, bidding/quoting, publishing, localization, review, reporting and more. Many studios gave shout-outs to their in-house pipeline heroes working tirelessly behind the scenes, and we join them in recognizing these folks. We saw companies nominate consulting developers who came into their studios and built amazing tools, and we love to see the rise of this new cadre of experts.

As we did last year, we are recognizing two types of contributions – pipeline tools (cleverly-developed, elegant solutions with an eye toward those that solve problems common to many studios) and pipeline heroes (people who moved the field forward within the Shotgun community and out in the wider industry). Here they are:

Pipeline Shotty Awards

For the top tools of 2015

Media Submit and Media Link, EA Germany (René Calles)

When artists render out image sequences from the Frostbite game engine, this toolset lets them easily drag and drop their media onto the appropriate task and add notes to all versions uploaded or just specific versions via the details pane. They can tag versions here as well as attach any associated files. Once artists submit work, it is published to Shotgun, compressed and uploaded for preview to the media site, and also renamed, versioned and stored in the server based on the context of the task.

Milk’s Smart Publish, a simple, powerful tool that grew out of experience, ties together publishing and communication, connecting people inside a small studio in an elegant way. It sends ‘smart’ publish notification emails based on rules (rigging to animation, lighting to comp, CC to the HOD of the department, etc.)

Pipeline Hero Awards

For people pushing the field of pipeline forward significantly, within the Shotgun community or in the broader industry.

These folks are true power users, having designed and heavily customized a streamlined, fully functional multi-site pipeline based on Toolkit that includes all standard Toolkit apps, running solidly in production. They have relentlessly driven Toolkit forward and pushed the Shotgun team (hard!) in that area, and in doing so they’ve achieved something distinctive that benefits the entire Shotgun community.

Hannes Ricklefs, MPC

When you think about people who have had an impact on the growth and understanding of pipelines, Hannes is likely top of mind. We’re recognizing him with a Hero award for his years-long efforts to move pipeline forward and foster industry-wide understanding. Back in 2008 he co-authored a SIGGRAPH paper on the pipelines for Chronicles of Narnia and followed it up with one on Prince of Persia’s pipeline in 2010. That same year he organized the first SIGGRAPH Birds of a Feather on Pipeline and has been holding it every year since. His co-authored paper on the need for standardization within global vfx productions, co-authored book Production Pipeline Fundamentals for Films and Games, many talks and interviews on the topic, and his Google group have brought the pipeline community together and given it active forums for discussion, idea-sharing and problem solving.

Choosing whom to recognize this year was no easy task and we thank every team and individual who took the time to gather descriptions and screens for their submissions. We’re sending all submitters a t-shirt as token of our appreciation for their efforts.

We also want to take an opportunity to give a shout-out to all of the people working way behind the scenes at studios everywhere to create pipelines and tools that make laborious processes better/faster/happier for humans, and helping companies to thrive. We salute you!